Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Last.fm going to charge for radio service

According to the recent announcement:

In order to keep providing the best radio service on the web, we need to ask our listeners from countries other than USA, UK and Germany to subscribe for €3.00 per month.
 and this will be in effect from March 30, 2009. Just how many things are wrong here? Unfairness, bad marketing, no understanding about 'one web, no borders' and um, Economics, just to say a few. Stinks worse than rotten fish, really. The comments section is already full of users expressing incomprehension, shocked disgust and 'good-bye last.fm' messages, and as much as I love the idea of social music revolution (which has been wiped from the logo since last July's update) and the original incarnation, I can't say the same of the new, arrogant Last.fm of the past 9 months and the self-destructing direction it is pig-headedly going, and I don't even want to contribute any more data and am now seriously searching for an alternative radio. And if any site starts to offer scrobbling, I'll desert this rotting ship for sure.

Do you use last.fm, and how do you feel about this? Sound off in the comments! (Or go say something at the blog link above.)

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Salyu New Single, 'Halfway', Due February


Scanty info yet, but I definitely prefer this wintery cover to the recent weirder-than-usual thing that is the Merkmal covers. And this is what's on her official site :


UPDATED: Due to languishing Japanese study plans, I can't really tell you what's going on in the first link except it has something to do with Cirque du Soleil, which is cool (alert: loud background music), but the second one leads to the promotion site of 'Halfway', the movie which Salyu's namesake track is the theme song for. The 'theme song' tab is still tagged 'coming soon', but the refrain portion of the song can be heard as the background music. This is another of her higher-pitched poppish ones--nothing against that--just that my personal wish of a (however fleeting) return to Lily Chou Chou era ethereal awesomeness is left unanswered again. #heaves a wistful sigh#

(P.S. For more Salyu news and stuff please visit http://salyu.aiamu.net/. Still under construction but better than none, and I'm definitely not turning Uku into a second Salyu news blog.. =p)

Can't wait for Feb! :)